Nicodemus smiled. The valet opened the cart and something far more diabolical than torture hardware was there. It was breakfast. The old valet started setting out food on the table. Hash browns. Some cheese. Some biscuits, bacon, sausages, pancakes, toast, fruit. And coffee, dear G.o.d. Hot coffee. The smell hit my stomach, and even frozen as it was it started crawling around on the inside of my abdomen, trying to figure out how to get away and get some food.
Nicodemus sat down, and the valet poured him some coffee. I guess pouring his own was beneath him. "I did try to keep you out of this affair."
"Yeah. You seem like such a sweet guy. You"re the one who edited the prophecy Ulsharavas told me about?"
"You"ve no idea how difficult it is to waylay an angelic messenger."
"Uh-huh," I said. "So why"d you do it?"
Nicodemus was not too important to add his own cream, no sugar. His spoon clinked on the cup. "I have a fond memory or two of your mother. It cost me little to attempt it. So why not?"
"That"s the second time you"ve mentioned her," I said.
"Yes. I respected her. Which is quite unusual for me."
"You respected her so much you s.n.a.t.c.hed me and brought me here. I see."
Nicodemus waved his hand. "It worked out that way. I needed someone of a certain metaphysical ma.s.s. You interfered in my business, you were convenient, and you fit the recipe."
Recipe? "What recipe?"
He sipped at his coffee and closed his eyes in enjoyment. The b.a.s.t.a.r.d. "I take it that this is the portion of the conversation where I reveal my plans to you?"
"What have you got to lose?"
"And apparently you expect me to tell you of any vulnerabilities I might have as well. I am wounded by the lack of professional respect this implies."
I ground my teeth. "Chicken."
He picked up a piece of bacon and nibbled at it. "It is enough for you to know that one of two things will happen."
"Oh, yeah?" Master of repartee, that"s me.
"Indeed. Either you will be freed and sit down to enjoy a nice breakfast..." He picked up a slightly curved and sharp-looking knife from the table. "Or I will cut your throat as soon as I finish eating."
He said it scary-without any melodrama to it at all. Matter-of-fact. The way most people say that they need to take out the trash. "Ye olde "join up or die" ultimatum," I said. "Gee, no matter how many times I get it, that one never goes out of style."
"Your history indicates that you are too dangerous to leave alive, I"m afraid-and I am on a schedule," Nicodemus said.
A schedule? He was working against a time limit, then. "I"m really inconvenient that way. Don"t take it personal."
"I don"t," he a.s.sured me. "This isn"t easy for either of us. I"d use some sort of psychological technique on you, but I haven"t gotten caught up on some of the more recent developments." He took a piece of toast and b.u.t.tered it. "Then again, I suppose not many psychologists can drive chariots, so perhaps it balances out."
The door opened again, and a young woman came into the room. She had long, sleep-tousled dark hair, dark eyes, and a face a little too lean to be conventionally pretty. She wore a kimono of red silk belted loosely, so that gaps appeared as she moved. She evidently didn"t have anything on underneath it. Like I said, Undertown is cold.
The girl yawned and stretched lazily, watching me as she did. She too spoke with an odd, vaguely British accent. "Good morning."
"And you, little one. Harry Dresden, I don"t believe you"ve been introduced to my daughter, Deirdre."
I eyed the girl, who seemed vaguely familiar. "We haven"t met."
"Yes, we have," Deirdre said, reaching out to pluck a strawberry from the breakfast table. She took a slow bite from it, lips sealed around the fruit. "At the harbor."
"Ah. Madame Medusa, I presume."
Deirdre sighed. "I"ve never heard that one before. It"s so amusing. May I kill him, Father?"
"Not just yet," Nicodemus said. "But if it comes to that, he"s mine."
Deirdre nodded sleepily. "Have I missed breakfast?"
Nicodemus smiled at her. "Not at all. Give us a kiss."
She slid onto his lap and did. With tongue. Yuck. After a moment she rose, and Nicodemus held one of the chairs out for her as she sat down. He reseated himself and said, "There are three chairs here, Dresden. Are you sure you wouldn"t like to take breakfast with us?"
I started to tell him what he could do with his third chair, but the smell of food stopped me. I suddenly felt desperately, painfully hungry. The water got colder. "What did you have in mind?"
Nicodemus nodded to one of the goons. The man walked over to me, drawing a jewelry box out of his pocket. He opened it, offering it out to me.
I mimed a gasp. "But this is so sudden."
The goon glared. Nicodemus smiled. Inside the jewelry box was an ancient silver coin, like the one I"d seen in the alley behind the hospital. The tarnish on the coin was in the shape of another sigil.
"You like me. You really like me," I said without enthusiasm. "You want me to join up?"
"You needn"t if you do not wish to," Nicodemus said. "I just want you to hear our side of things before you make up your mind to die needlessly. Accept the coin. Have some breakfast with us. We can talk. After that, if you don"t want to have anything to do with me, you may leave."
"You"d just let me go. Sure."
"If you accept the coin, I doubt I"d be able to stop you."
"So what says I wouldn"t turn around and use it against you?"
"Nothing," Nicodemus said. "But I am a great believer in the benevolence of human nature."
Like h.e.l.l he was. "Do you actually think you could convince me to join up with you?"
"Yes," he said. "I know you."
"Do not."
"Do too," he replied. "I know more about you than you do yourself."
"Such as?"
"Such as why you chose this kind of life for yourself. To appoint yourself protector of mortal kind, and to make yourself the enemy of any who would do them harm. To live outcast from your own kind, laughed at and mocked by most mortals. Living in a hovel, barely sc.r.a.ping by. Spurning wealth and fame. Why do you do it?"
"I"m a disciple of the Tao of Peter Parker, obviously," I said.
I guess Nicodemus was a DC Comics fan, because he didn"t get it. "It is all you will allow yourself, and I know why."
"All right. Why?"
"Because you are ruled by fear. You are afraid, Dresden."
I said, "Of what?"
"Of what you could be if you ever let yourself stray from the right-hand path," Nicodemus said. "Of the power you could use. You"ve thought about what it might be like to bend the world to your will. The things you could have. The people. Some part of you has considered and found joy in the idea of using your abilities to take what you wish. And you are afraid of that joy. So you drive yourself toward martyrdom instead."
I started to deny his words. But I couldn"t. He was right, or at least not wholly wrong. My voice came out subdued. "Everyone has thoughts like that sometimes."
"No," Nicodemus said, "they don"t. Most people never consider such actions. It never crosses their minds. The average mortal would have no sure way of taking that kind of power. But for you, it"s different. You may pretend you are like them. But you are not."
"That"s not true," I replied.
"Of course it is," Nicodemus said. "You might not like to admit it, but that makes it no less true. It"s denial. There are a number of ways you express it in your life. You don"t want to see what you are, so you have very few pictures of yourself. No mirrors, either."
I ground my teeth. "I"m not different in any way that matters. I"m not any better than anyone else. We all put our pants on one leg at a time."
"Granted," Nicodemus said. "But a century from now, your mortal a.s.sociates will be rotting in the earth, whereas, barring amputation or radical shifts in fashion, you will still be putting your pants on one leg at a time. All these allies and friends you have made will be withered and gone, while you are just beginning to come into your full strength. You look like a mortal, Dresden. But make no mistake. You aren"t one."
"Oh, shut up."
"You are different. You are a freak. In a city of millions, you are all but alone."
"Which explains my dating life," I said, but I couldn"t put much zing in the words. Something in my throat felt heavy.
Nicodemus had the valet pour coffee for Deirdre, but he spooned sugar into it himself. "You"re afraid, but you don"t have to be. You"re above them, Dresden. There"s an entire world waiting for you. Uncounted paths you could take. Allies who would stand with you over the years. Who would accept you instead of scorning you. You could discover what happened to your parents. Avenge them. Find your family. Find a place where you truly belonged."
He"d chosen to use words that struck hard on the oldest wound in me, a child"s pain that had never fully healed. It hurt to hear those words. It stirred up a senseless old hope, a yearning. It made me feel lost. Empty.
Alone.
"Harry," Nicodemus said, his voice almost compa.s.sionate. "I used to be much as you are now. You are trapped. You are lying to yourself. You pretend to be like any other mortal because you are too terrified to admit that you aren"t."
I didn"t have an answer for that. The silver coin gleamed, still offered out to me.
Nicodemus laid one hand on the knife again. "I"m afraid I must ask you for an immediate decision."
Deirdre looked at the knife and then at me, eyes hot. She licked some spilled sugar off the rim of her coffee cup, and remained silent.
What if I did take the coin? If Nicodemus was on the level, I could at least live to fight another day. I had no doubts that Nicodemus would kill me, as he had Gaston LaRouche, Francisca Garcia, and that poor b.a.s.t.a.r.d b.u.t.ters had cut into. There was nothing stopping him, and with the water still running over me, I doubted that even my death curse would be at one hundred percent.
I couldn"t stop myself from imagining what it would feel like to bleed to death, there under the cold water. A hot, burning line on my throat. Dizziness and cold. Weakness fading into warmth that became perfect, endless darkness. Death.
G.o.d help me, I didn"t want to die.
But I"d seen the poor b.a.s.t.a.r.d Ursiel had enslaved and driven mad. What he"d suffered was worse than death. And chances were that if I took the coin, the demon that came with it might coerce or corrupt me into the same thing. I"m not a saint. I"m not even particularly sterling, morally speaking. I"ve had dark urges before. I"ve been fascinated by them. Attracted to them. And more than once, I"ve given in to them.
It was a weakness that the demon in the ancient coin could exploit. I wasn"t immune to temptation. The demon, the Fallen, would drown me in it. It"s what the Fallen do.
I made my decision.
Nicodemus watched me, eyes steady, his knife hand perfectly still.
"Lead us not into temptation," I said. "But deliver us from evil. Isn"t that how it goes?"
Deirdre licked her lips. The goon shut the box and stepped back.
"Are you certain, Dresden?" Nicodemus said in a quiet voice. "This is your very last chance."
I slumped weakly. There didn"t seem to be much of a point to bravado anymore. I"d made the call, and that was that. "I"m certain. f.u.c.k off, Nick."
Nicodemus stared at me impa.s.sively for a moment. Then he stood up with the knife and said, "I suppose I"ve had enough breakfast."
Chapter Twenty-two Nicodemus walked over to me, his expression somewhat distracted. I realized with a chill that he looked like a man planning his activities for the day. To Nicodemus, I wasn"t a person anymore. I was an item on his checklist, a note in his appointment book. He would feel no differently about cutting my throat than he would about putting down a check mark.
When he got within arm"s reach, I couldn"t stop myself from trying to get away from him. I thrashed at the ropes, hanging on to the desperate hope that one of them might break and give me a chance to fight, to run, to live. The ropes didn"t break. I didn"t get loose. Nicodemus watched me until I"d exhausted myself again.
Then he took a handful of my hair and pulled my chin up and back, twisting my head to my right. I tried to stop him, but I was immobilized and exhausted.
"Be still," he said. "I"ll make it clean."
"Do you want the bowl, Father?" Deirdre asked.
Nicodemus"s expression flickered with annoyance. His voice came out tight and impatient. "Where is my mind today? Porter, bring it to me."
The grey-haired valet opened the door and left the room.
A heartbeat later there was a wheezing grunt, and Porter flew back through the doorway and landed on his back. He let out a pained croak and curled into a fetal position.
Nicodemus sighed, turning. "Bother. What now?"
Nicodemus had looked bored when Anna Valmont emptied her gun into him. When I"d blasted a Nicodemus-shaped dent in the drywall of the hotel, he"d come through it without a ruffled hair. But when he saw the valet laying on the ground before the open door, Nicodemus"s face went pale, his eyes widened, and he took a pair of quick steps to stand behind me, his knife at my throat. Even his shadow recoiled, rolling back away from the open door.
"The j.a.p," Nicodemus snarled. "Kill him."
There was a second of startled silence, and then the goons went for their guns. The one nearest the door didn"t get his weapon out of its holster. Shiro, still in the outfit he"d worn at McAnnally"s, came through the opening in a flash of black and white and red, his cane in his hand. He drove the end of the cane into Goon A"s neck, and the thug dropped to the ground.
Goon B got his gun out and pointed it at Shiro. The old man bobbed to his left and then smoothly rolled right. The gun went off, and sparks flew up from two of the walls as the bullet ricocheted. Shiro drew Fidelacchius Fidelacchius clear of its wooden sheath as he spun closer to the goon, the movement so fast that the sword looked like a blurred sheet of shining steel. Goon B"s gun went flying through the air, his shooting hand still gripping it. The man stared at the stump at the end of his arm as blood gouted from it, and Shiro spun again, one heel rising to chin level. The kick broke something in the wounded goon"s jaw, and the man collapsed to the damp floor. clear of its wooden sheath as he spun closer to the goon, the movement so fast that the sword looked like a blurred sheet of shining steel. Goon B"s gun went flying through the air, his shooting hand still gripping it. The man stared at the stump at the end of his arm as blood gouted from it, and Shiro spun again, one heel rising to chin level. The kick broke something in the wounded goon"s jaw, and the man collapsed to the damp floor.
Shiro had taken out three men in half as many seconds, and he hadn"t stopped moving. Fidelacchius Fidelacchius flashed again, and the chair beneath Deirdre collapsed, spilling her onto the floor. The old man promptly stepped on her wealth of dark hair, whirled the sword, and brought its tip down to rest against the back of Deirdre"s neck. flashed again, and the chair beneath Deirdre collapsed, spilling her onto the floor. The old man promptly stepped on her wealth of dark hair, whirled the sword, and brought its tip down to rest against the back of Deirdre"s neck.
The room became almost completely silent. Shiro kept his blade to Deirdre"s neck, and Nicodemus did the same to mine. The little old man didn"t look like the same person I"d talked to. Not that he had physically changed, so much as that the sheer presence of him was different-his features hard as stone, weathering the years only to grow stronger. When he had moved, it had been with a dancer"s grace, speed, and skill. His eyes flashed with a silent strength that had been concealed before, and his hands and forearms were corded with muscle. The sword"s blade gleamed red with blood and torchlight.
Nicodemus"s shadow edged a bit farther back from the old man.